Currents; FLOORING -- Boulevardier at Home

By William L. Hamilton

Published: October 23, 1997

Correction Appended

Decorators can be their own worst enemies at show houses -- giving away their best trade secrets as they stage their most stylish tricks. Here are the names, addresses and numbers behind ideas at the French Designer Showhouse, 49 East 67th Street (through Nov. 16).

Robert Couturier had a plan for his salon's floor -- literally. It is Turgot's map of Paris, first published in 1739, now available in a French reprint that he found at J. Pocker & Sons, a framing shop at 135 East 63d Street, (800) 443-3116. The map, a bird's-eye view of the city ordered by Turgot, a Parisian commerce official and father of the economist, comes in a portfolio of 20 sheets ($900 for the set). The sheets form a plan, 2 yards by 3, which Mr. Couturier used as an area rug, protected by Plexiglas.

Photo (Photographs by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Correction: October 28, 1997, Tuesday A report in the Currents column of House & Home on Thursday about a designer who placed a portfolio reprint of an 18th-century map of Paris under plexiglass as a floor covering misstated the price of the portfolio. It is $700, not $900.